


she came from the wasteland (and brought a garden with her)

by bitterandsick



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Femslash February, Friendship, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 20:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5942845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitterandsick/pseuds/bitterandsick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Citadel, cage mates come and go on a man's whim. Angharad has learned not to get attached, not to make friends, not to hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she came from the wasteland (and brought a garden with her)

It had been a sleepy kind of day and the Dag has been dozing on and off since sunrise, limbs stretched first across a chair, then on a spot of shade across the floor, legs and arms too long and spindly to find a comfortable position and too restless to actually sleep. She's a ghostly presence in Angharad's peripheral vision for the whole afternoon. Miss Giddy goes on and on about guzzoline wars and water wars and every war in-between and after while Capable's eyes go darker and darker, and eventually Angharad gets tired of the Dag jumping in and out the corners of his brain, dodging the bullets and cannons that zoom around in Miss Giddy's shivering voice, and turns around.

"Are you OK?" and when the Dag stares at her, unblinking because who's ever been _OK_ there, what kind of question is that: "What's wrong?"

The Dag balances herself on the tip of her right feet, the toes of the left barely grazing the ground and balance achieved instinctively when the feet rises, rises, then draws a perfect semicircle with the answer.

"The wasteland is coming. I've heard it".

Angharad has lived with her long enough now. It's been months, almost a year, she believes, since Immortan Joe cleaved her up from among the Wretched, and she knows not to scoff or roll her eyes at the Dag's warnings. She knows the Dag hears things like little animals do, travelling through the walls of the biodome and scurrying up and down the Citadel, things Angharad is deaf to like the boots of War Boys making way through the corridors and the screams of new bloodbags all the way from the workshop. If she says the wasteland is coming it is coming. Angharad braces for impact and prays for destruction, for an army of wastelanders to burn the place to the ground and for everything she knows to go up in flames in a war that another Miss Giddy will tell to someone else, someone who doesn't include ways of dying in their daydream routines.

"A sandstorm. We should make sure everything's tied up and the windows closed so we don't fly accidentally get out". Capable's sarcasm cuts clean through Angharad's fantasies and Miss Giddy, tired of talking about war, retires to a corner of the room to read her arms in silence. The Dag doesn't offer any other explanation. Angharad feels her muscles contract and stay there, painfully compact.

There _is_  a sandstorm later that afternoon and it howls across the biodome like the cries of so many wives. _But this is not it_ , the Dag murmurs in her ear while they all huddle in one of the beds, bored and irritable. The wasteland that comes to them is not at all what Angharad had expected.

***

She is brought in hours later, all sand and cracked lips, still unwashed, and at first Angharad doesn't know what to make of her, small and dark between two towering guards but oh so _angry_ , so angry she's almost buzzing with it. _The wasteland is here_ in a sing-song voice and Angharad swallows because she can't be it. Wastelanders are even lower than the Wretched in the pecking order, that's what they've learned, that's what they've been told. They crawl across the sands with death nipping at their heels and sometimes wander towards the Citadel trying to bask in its glory and resources. There's nothing out there but carrion birds, bleached bones and burning agony.

And yet this angry girl is delicate and beautiful, more than Angharad or Capable could ever be, a halo of black hair on her head, smooth skin, big lips full of blood and a bruise forming already where a smile would have been. Angharad bites the scar inside her mouth, familiar. _Of course Immortan has chosen her, how could he not_ and as soon as the thought appears Angharad hates herself so much she could scream and can barely stop her nails from drawing a new line across her jaw. Instead she pinches her lips -but it's not enough, she knows, she knows she'll come back later to draw blood- and counts seconds while the girl looks around. Her whole body is tense even now that no one's holding her and Angharad keeps her distance because she recognizes the tension that threatens an attack, marked on the thighs and knees. If she gets closer there'll be a fight. One scream and the guards will come and drag this girl from her, as carefully as possible, peeling them from each other but leaving no mark. But what if she didn't scream and let the wastelander go at it instead, one last chance to really do some harm before the Citadel takes the fight from her, what then, what good would Angharad be then, broken and useless? And she almost takes a step before Miss Giddy appears at her side and it's Miss Giddy who gets closer to the wastelander and Miss Giddy's wrinkled feet that get stained when the wastelander spits a mix of blood, sand and saliva on the ground and warns them.   
  
"Don't come any closer or I'll kill you," she threatens. She promises.


End file.
